Pliny the Elder on science and technology

the long version

"This is the first major re-assessment of Pliny the scientist since Bailey's publication in the late 1920s. Modern experiments, simulating the techniques described by Pliny, and an in-depth study of his development of a technical language, confirm his unique contribution to our knowledge of science in early imperial Rome. Pliny does not, in general, understand the principles underlying the phenomena he observes but makes a significant input - especially in the fields of crystallography, chemistry, and physics as well as of the earth sciences - from which beginnings those scientific disciplines were to evolve many centuries later."--Jacket.